Parental involvement in sexuality education: advancing understanding through an analysis of findings from the 2010 Irish Contraception and Crisis Pregnancy Study

Abstract

Recent research has highlighted the importance of parental involvement in sexuality education, and studies of sexuality education sometimes take place through national sexual health surveys. This paper aims to identify key parental characteristics that predict parental involvement in sexuality education while also encouraging a debate on how this topic is optimally investigated. Data used in this study comprised a subset from a nationally representative cross-sectional telephone survey of adults (18–45 years) living in Ireland (N = 3002). Parents (21–45 years) of a child/children aged 6 years or older at the time of the study (n = 966) were included in analyses. Results using propensity score analysis found that parents who reported engaging in sexuality education with their children were more likely to be women, aged 36–45 years, and also were more likely to have a larger number of children. Advancing the field of sexuality education research could be facilitated by the application of survey method and the advanced statistical techniques used here. Furthermore, a stand-alone national survey assessing parental involvement in sexuality education would be a worthy contribution to this knowledge base.

Keywords:

• sexuality education
• parental involvement
• sexual health
• national surveys
• propensity score analysis

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the members of the project steering committee for their help and advice. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments. This work was supported by the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS) Research & Senior Research Fellowship Projects scheme which was co-funded by the HSE Crisis Pregnancy Programme (grant number 1425).